It didn’t take more than five minutes to entice the first man outside. Within seconds, she was fucking him.
Eisheth didn’t take him; she just wanted him to climax. She’d get a little bit of his juice that way, though it was only a marginal improvement. Maintaining the illusion of comeliness cost her almost as much as she gained. She adjusted her clothing and went back in, and it was as if the men were already waiting.
She did it again, and again, quickies, with the men undoing their belts and flopping out their cocks and her bending over.
By the fourth guy, she didn’t even bother going outside, just did it in the bathroom. By the sixth guy, she didn’t even make it that far, but did it in the hallway. She wasn’t trying terribly hard to be attractive, instead hoarding the energy, the little spurts of life force that these morally bankrupt men provided, along with the whiskey with which they paid for the easy fuck.
Eisheth didn’t have the same hesitation that any mortal woman would have had in her situation, but the experience was still repugnant to her: the grunting, the pounding, the smells of the unwashed, the anger some men felt toward her when they couldn’t get it up, and the mess they left behind when they did.
“Don’t worry about it, sonny,” she snarled at one of them. “I wouldn’t want to screw me either.”
At some point in the night, Eisheth found herself in the back of the bar itself, on top of a pool table, as one man after another had his way with her. They shoved money into her hands, but she didn’t even look. She had a cock in her mouth and one up her ass, and these didn’t do her any good at all, but she was too tired, too drunk to fight it, and anything that kept the men coming was all right. It was all for a single goal. Each of these ugly fucks added up to give her one last chance at revenge. If she failed, she’d fade, become a ghost, a nightmare perched on men’s chests as they slept, inspiring erotic dreams and gaining another day’s meager existence through them.
If she succeeded, she’d be back to herself.
So Eisheth let these awful men fuck her, one after another. Both men and women were chanting, “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” and cheering every time a man released, or pretended to release: no one could tell, because by now she was a sloppy mess, dripping with fluid. The men were having a hard time enjoying it, some doing it because of dares and some because, well, there she was, spread out, ready for the taking.
And finally, she lay abandoned on the pool table, spread-eagled, and no man stepped forward. The bartender stood over her, looking down at her in disgust. “Get out of my bar, you ugly bitch. You just messed up my pool table.” He grabbed the money from her fist.
She stood up with as much dignity as she could, nearly bent over in pain, and sticky fluid ran down her legs. She found enough of her clothing to cover herself and stumbled to the door.
“Whore!” one of the women shouted.
“Slut!” yelled another. Then everyone was shouting, as if cheering at a football game.
She told herself didn’t care what these humans thought. She began to leave.
“Get out of here, skank!” someone yelled during a lull in the jeering.
It was one taunt too many.
The key was already in the lock, in preparation for closing. Eisheth turned the key and dropped it into her pocket. She drew herself to her full height and faced the mob. The room fell silent. She walked up to a skinny guy with tattoos on his neck and face, certain he was the last to call out, and likely a repeat customer on the pool table. The jeer slid off his face when she dropped her illusion. He cried out and tried to run.
She grabbed him by his shirt, whirled him around, and cut his throat with her talons. She cut the throats of three other men before anyone moved. She hunted the women next, because they had yelled the loudest; they had been the most demeaning. It was like a replay of the sex, a blur of motion, one person after another, killed as violently and bloodily as possible. People were slipping on the blood and gore, trying to get away from Eisheth, piled up at the dead-bolted back entrance.
Finally, it was silent. A groan escaped from the pile of bodies, and Eisheth sought out the source and ended the noise. Now everyone was either dead or hiding beneath the corpses. The silence was total but for the hum of the coolers and the occasional sound of a passing vehicle outside. A couple of neglected arcade games in the corner trilled and boomed once or twice.
Eisheth grabbed a man’s body by the shoulders and turned him over. It was the first man she’d fucked, maybe the only man in the room she could’ve recognized. She sawed through his neck and detached his head, then went over to the bar and set it down facing the front door.
She went back again and again, until the entire length of the bar was covered with severed heads, all facing the door.
Then she went to the bathroom, took off all her clothes, and washed away the blood, even washing her hair. She grabbed handfuls of paper towels, wetted them, and wiped her body, again and again. Finally, her skin was red and raw, but it was clean.
Eisheth felt rejuvenated, energized by the physical domination of so many humans. The death and destruction hadn’t tired her at all. It took none of her magical energy, only the energy fueled by her physical body. She walked to the bar, naked, and downed several pickled eggs, washing them down with beer. A good night’s rest at a nice hotel, and she’d be good to go.
She searched for the bartender. He was mostly intact, with a stove-in chest. She felt his neck. He was warm but had no pulse. She bit into her wrist and dripped Blood into his mouth, nearly half a cup, enough to keep a living man going for days, enough to revive—for a short time—a dead man.
“Wh- What?” he sputtered in between coughing up his own blood. Then he moaned, “Let me die.”
“No problem,” Eisheth said. “What’s the combination to the safe?”
His eyes filmed over. He was more in the land of the dead than in the land of the living, but he recited the numbers.
“Thank you,” she said, rising. She stomped down on the bartender’s head, feeling a satisfying crunch under her bare foot. She opened the safe behind the bar, pleased to see it was packed with Friday and Saturday’s revenue. She filled a plastic bag with cash and tucked it into her backpack, the only thing she had taken with her from the homeless camp earlier that day—or was it yesterday?
Eisheth risked healing the worst of her wounds, and the Blood finally stopped flowing down her back. She looked in the mirror and flashed into her ingenue form. A beautiful, naked woman looked back, flawless—her hair was a little scraggly, her makeup smeared, but that only made her look like she’d just risen from bed.
She scrounged around for the cleanest clothing she could find: a shirt from someone whom she had cut the legs out from under and pants from a young man who had fallen over a table, which had kept the blood from his severed arm from reaching his lower extremities.
Eisheth was certain she could maintain the illusion of this body long enough to get what she wanted done. She required one last conquest before she left town, one last attempt to become completely whole. To feel like she hadn’t just wasted two months in a Western shithole.
She didn’t want to try to climb her way back to the top the hard way. Her mind flashed to her sisters, whom she’d had to ask for help in the past and who never let her forget it. She’d have to be far down to resort to calling them.
It was a gamble. If she failed, she’d be weakened even further, fall backward, become a wraith. But if she succeeded, she’d be back on top.
One last Cull, and she’d be in great shape for the next town.
When Eisheth had first arrived in town, her first choice had not been Doug Johnson but his best friend, Cary Deakins. He had dripped with vitality, his life force exuding from his pores.
She’d decided he was too risky. She’d run into his type before. They weren’t really playboys; they were just extraordinarily attractive to women. Eventually, either he or the woman would move on, but they almost always remained friends.
Given a year or two, Eisheth might have turned him, but she didn’t waste that much time on any man anymore. She could gain more life force through lesser men through multiple Cullings and take less time doing it.
So she chose his friend, Doug, who was perfect: unimaginative, but solid. His life force was good, if not spectacular.
Now, as she contemplated how best to escape this awful town, her thoughts returned to Cary. He could restore her in one night. That he’d apparently joined forces with that bitch who was following her around the country was even better. Serena Carlton had forced Eisheth take her victims into the wilderness, which in this savage country still had wild animals capable of killing people.
Eisheth would take Cary and kill her tormentor at the same time. The perfect revenge.
It wouldn’t be easy. He’d be wary of her, but if she really turned on the glamour, he’d be like most men, when it came right down to it.
He’d fuck her.
A simple fucking, as long as he was a willing partner, would give her the boost she needed.
Then she’d kill the little prick just for being what he was, tempting and unavailable.
She began to leave the bar, then turned around. She found some poster board and markers and started making a sign. The men and women in this bar had been part of the underclass of this culture. Their families weren’t the kind of people who went to the police at the first sign of something wrong. Going missing probably wasn’t that unusual an occurrence for them.
When Eisheth was done, she was rather proud of her sign. She’d always been the most artistic of the sisters.
Under a nicely drawn skull and crossbones, the sign read:
DANGER!
THIS UNIT UNDER FUMIGATION.
APPLIED: Friday the 21st, 12:00 A.M.
DO NOT ENTER!
She smiled to herself. Anyone smelling something odd would have an explanation, at least for a while.
Long enough for her to finish the job.
Chapter 21
Gasper Gerhard’s Journal
Blood calls to Blood. It doesn’t matter how little is spilled or how long ago it was taken. The Daughters of Lilith can sense it.
Only the Cutting can negate this effect.
Of course, the more Blood used, the more likely the user will be found. And if the Blood was used recently, the Succubae will sense it all the sooner.
So, here’s the question I have struggled with. Why do we—why do I—not destroy the Blood once and for all and remove the temptation? For it is a fact that we will never escape the Succubae as long as the Blood exists.
I suppose each of us has come to the same conclusion. While that might make us—our family—safe, it would do nothing to help the world. The Succubae would continue on, and without the Guardians, there would be no chance of ever stopping them.
But as long as the Blood is in our keeping, there is at least the chance—as slim at it may seem—that someday one of us will use it to destroy the Succubae once and for all.
***
San Francisco, 1967
Rick Gerhard awoke to soft hands stroking his chest, knowing and skillful.
He couldn’t even remember her name. Such were the times. “Free love,” they called it.
But nothing is free, Rick thought. Especially not sex.
He’d met the hippie girl on the street. She was tall and slim, with large breasts, the fashion model type who had gone the other way, to the unwashed masses. That’s the language she used: the “masses” and the “proletariat.”
“You have an old soul,” she had said. “I can see it in your eyes.”
In spite of this seemingly trite observation, which she’d probably made to dozens of guys before, Rick wondered briefly if she possessed some clairvoyant abilities, if she could somehow see past this costume he wore to blend in. So he let her hang around. Maybe she really could see beneath the surface. Besides, he liked that she’d chosen to live on the street instead of on an advertising banner.
Clarrisa? Carrisa? He could never quite remember her name.
He tried ignoring her, but she followed him around. Rick didn’t lock his doors—that was considered uncool—and she crawled into his bed one night.
He pushed her away roughly. “I’ve got an old lady at home,” he said.
She was naked, and she was gorgeous. He’d made a Cutting not long before, but even so, he wasn’t immune to her attraction.
“Then what are you doing here, babe?” she asked.
“She was bugging me,” he said. He’d heard the hippies using such terminology and, ridiculous as it sounded, he mimicked it. “I had to split, man.”
The girl was not dissuaded. “Love the one you’re with,” she murmured softly. Her hand strayed down between his legs, but Rick caught it before she could squeeze his crotch and find nothing there but the rolled-up sock he used for padding.
He took her shoulders and held her until she looked him in the eyes. “You seem like a sweet girl,” he said firmly, not sounding like a hippie at all now, though it didn’t seem to matter. “That’s not the way it works. You’re gonna get hurt.”
As he spoke, he could see by the spark in her eyes that she was turned on by his forcefulness. He sighed and let her stay.
One night, he went down on her until she finally cried out, “Please, stop!” She stared up at him in wonder. “Are you sure you don’t want me to return the favor? I mean, I’d be glad to. I like it.”
“Go to sleep, babe,” he said, his voice soft. It was the first endearment he’d ever used with her or any woman in a very long time. She smiled, cuddling up to his side. Soon after, she was asleep.
Rick treated her badly after that, calling her his “bitch” and making her follow him around like she was his puppy dog or something. Some part of him wanted to strike back at women, and he wasn’t proud of it.
Sometimes when he awoke in the middle of the night and looked at her, he felt a surge of shame, which only made him angrier. He really didn’t understand his own reaction.
Now, as her fingers pinched his nipples and then began to explore farther down, he grabbed her wrist. She gave a sharp cry.
“Sorry,” he said. He stumbled out of bed, shaking his head to dislodge the fog befuddling him. He took the same drugs that everyone else took, and when it got to be too much, he’d take a dab of Blood to clear his head.
I’m out of Blood, he thought. It scared him that he’d let himself run out. He got out of bed and dressed, keeping his back her as he slipped the usual rolled-up sock in his pants. Clarissa/Carrisa watched him silently. How much does she know? How much does she suspect?
There was no denying that he wanted her. More, he wanted her in the manner sex usually took between a man and a woman. Castrated as he was, that shouldn’t have been possible, and yet there it was. Perhaps it proved how strong the Succubae stimulus was when all three Daughters of Lilith were together in one place.
But he couldn’t allow it.
Rick rose and left his pad. He walked to the upscale garage where he stashed his van. Not long before he’d arrived in Haight Ashbury, he’d bought a van with a picture on it of a soaring eagle holding a bright red peace sign in its claws.
Sometimes Rick felt like a freak in costume. His long hair tickled him in bed at night. The cuffs of his ridiculous bell-bottom pants caught on the corners of things. His bright yellow shirt made him feel like a circus clown. But he needed to blend in, so he looked and dressed like a hippie: a young, vigorous, and handsome hippie, his thick black hair and dark eyes attractive to the opposite sex.
He wandered the streets like an actor in a play. “Groovy, man,” was his standard response to
things, and he almost laughed every time he said it. Just add “man” to any sentence and he could pass as one of the anti-establishment bohemians.
He could enjoy the drugs—indeed, he had to join in so his erstwhile companions wouldn’t be suspicious, but they had little effect on him. He always carried a little of the Blood, which negated the effects. Not too much, because he was worried about the supply. He’d been a little too profligate over the years since he’d thought he’d be the last of the Guardians. At night, he imagined his father scolding him for being so wasteful with the precious Blood.
The atmosphere in Haight Ashbury was spreading, and the rosy glow of free love and drugs and the Summer of Love permeated the city. To be jealous was to be a square. To refuse an offer was to be a jerk. The idea that there might be a reckoning, that people would be damaged, hadn’t even entered most of these young people’s minds. The whole atmosphere whispered to Rick of the Succubae. They were nearby, fully enjoying a culture so attuned to their own needs and desires. The Daughters of Lilith blended in easily, free spirits completely in tune with the times. The sexual revolution was made for them—indeed, Rick wondered if they weren’t responsible for it, as crazy as that sounded.
This was the closest he’d ever come to tracking down the Succubae together in one place. They’d split up over the past few centuries. Individually, their influence was much less noticeable, hidden in the general decadence of the times.
But together, their effect was unmistakable.
Now, he felt an urge despite The Cutting.
It was the deepest hours of night. Even the three sister Succubae were probably asleep. Rick threw open the back of the van and climbed in. It wasn’t the usual hippie van with cushions and tapestries—it was full of guns and ammo, and the last four bottles of the Blood of the Succubus, carefully packed and hidden in a locked wooden box he’d bolted to the floor.
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